

INTUMESCENTIJE. 



cult respiration, uneasy in themselves, and, from the inability 

 of exercise, unfit for discharging the duties of life to others : 

 and for that reason I have given such a disease a place here. 

 Many physicians have considered it as an object of practice , 

 and as giving, even in no very high degree, a disposition to 

 many diseases; I am of opinion that it should be an object 

 of practice more frequently than it has been, and therefore that 

 it merits our consideration here. 



MDCXXII. It may perhaps be alleged, that I have not 

 been sufficiently correct, in putting the disease of corpulency 

 as an Intumescentia pinguedinosa, and therefore implying its 

 being an increase of the bulk of the body from an accumulatio n 

 of oil in the cellular texture only. I am aware of this objec- 

 tion : and as I have already said, that emaciation (MDCII.) 

 depends either upon a general deficiency of fluids in the vas- 

 cular system, or upon a deficiency of oil in the cellular tex- 

 ture; so I should perhaps have observed farther, that the 

 corpulency, or general fulness of the body, may depend upon 

 the fulness of the vascular system as well as upon that of the 

 cellular texture. This is true, and for the same reasons I 

 ought perhaps, after Linnaeus and Sagar, to have set down ple- 

 thora as a particular disease, and as an instance of morbid in- 

 tumescence. I have however avoided this, as Sauvages and 

 Vogel have done, because I apprehend that plethora is to be 

 considered as a state of temperament only, which may indeed 

 dispose to disease ; but not as a disease in itself, unless, in the 

 language of the Stahlians, it be a Plethora commota, when it 

 produces a disease accompanied with particular symptoms, which 

 give occasion to its being distinguished by a different appella- 

 tion. Farther, it appears to me, that the symptoms which 

 Linnaeus, and more particularly those which Sagar employs in 

 the character of plethora, never do occur but when the Intumes- 

 centia pinguedinosa has a great share in producing them. It. 

 is, however, necessary to observe here, that plethora and obe- 

 sity are generally combined together ; and that in some cases 

 of corpulency it may be difficult to determine which of the 

 causes has the greatest share in producing it. It is, indeed, 

 very possible that a plethora may occur without great obesity ; 

 but I apprehend that obesity never happens to a considerable 



